While college campuses across the country brave a deluge of H1N1 cases, the flu virus has yet to storm through Colorado’s schools, with only a handful of reported cases.

But school administrators are ready. Extensive plans — derived from federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for colleges released last week — are in place at Colorado’s campuses.

At one extreme, should hundreds fall critically ill, campuses could close and dorm roommates could be separated. For less-severe scenarios, plans are in place to deliver food and medicine to bedridden students.

Meanwhile, preventive campaigns urging vigilant handwashing and encouraging ill students to stay home and cover coughs with the crook of an arm are aiming to lessen the anticipated blow from the so-called swine flu virus. Teams of antiseptic-swabbing staffers are blanketing campuses’ common areas.

“We are expecting to have a fairly large number of people sick. In the hundreds. We are fully aware and prepared for that,” said Bronson Hilliard, spokesman for the University of Colorado at Boulder, which so far this school year has had eight cases of influenza A, suspected to be H1N1.

CU officials spent the summer talking with college administrators in the Southern Hemisphere to get an idea of what to expect during the height of flu season.

“They were seeing fairly large numbers of people getting sick and fairly low numbers of complications,” Hilliard said.

CU, like most college campuses around the country, has a “scalable emergency-pandemic plan” to handle a flu outbreak. Students and staffers with flu symptoms and who are considered high risk — such as pregnant women and people with asthma or diabetes — are given anti-viral medicines such as Tamiflu.

Otherwise-healthy students with flu symptoms are asked to isolate themselves and get some rest. That can be a tough job for a new student eager to begin college life, Hilliard said.

“The challenge for us is that if you have a fever, we want you to stay in your room or house or apartment, which runs counter to what people want to do this time of year,” he said.

There have been no flu cases reported at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

Colorado State University in Fort Collins recorded its first influenza-A case Tuesday. School officials there have long planned for a pandemic. The school’s most extreme plan includes shutting down the campus. CSU students who share dorm rooms can ask for a short-term, single-bed room if their roommate has flu symptoms.

“We are as prepared as one can be,” said Dr. Jane Higgins of the CSU Health Network.

Jason Blevins covers tourism, mountain business, skiing and outdoor adventure sports for both the business and sports sections at The Denver Post, which he joined in 1997. He skis, pedals, paddles and occasionally boogies in the hills and is just as inspired by the lively entrepreneurial spirit that permeates Colorado's high country communities as he is by the views.

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